Culpable
by Adaren
Summary: Michael reflects: Maybe his real crime was committed long after getting into Fox River, not anytime before. MichaelSara


**Culpable**

_By Adaren_

A Michael and Sara fic

**Disclaimer:** None of this is mine, though, if he's for sale, I would be happy to purchase Michael Scofield.

**A/N:** This is my first Prison Break fic, and I'm somewhat pleased with it. I feel like the ending is perhaps a little bit choppy, and I loathe the title, but other than that, I think it's okay, if maybe a bit fluffy for Michael :o). Anyway, I'll also be posting drabbles and other fic at my new LJ: Enjoy this and please review!

**--**

A few months ago, a kiss was nothing.

Kisses were nothing but a prelude to something much better, which was something Michael had always known. From the time he was fourteen years old, and his hand had traveled up Kelly Rix's bare stomach with little to no hesitancy, he'd known there was definitely something else he was looking for.

He was impatient. He knew it and he recognized it.

**--**

On Thursday nights, he and his geeky engineer buddies from work got drinks at the Green Door Tavern on Orleans Street.

There were always women there.

Women who were grad students at the University of Chicago and Northwestern, who were very interested in snagging engineers and lawyers before it was too late, caring very little that those same engineers and lawyers had been the undergrads who had majored in physics or English and had stayed in their dorms all hours of the day. The difference between those guys, and the guys at the Green Door Tavern, was six figures. They were the type of women whose eyes sparkled at words like _Harry Winston_ and _lake-view condo_ and _Manolo Blahnik_.

However, even though Michael never gave any of them diamonds, they still gave out kisses like they were Jolly Ranchers.

**--**

And somehow, absurdly, sitting cross-legged on a dock somewhere in northern Illinois, he finds himself imaging Sara on a barstool at the Green Door Tavern, dressed up in a sparkly dress (blue, probably), with her hair swept up, the back of her neck bare.

He reconsiders: she didn't even have to be dressed up – just in jeans and a sweater, with her Fox River ID and car keys lying _forgotten_ on the kitchen table, curled up on a couch with a pint of ice cream and a book. (He sees her as a reader; someone who reads – but maybe he's wrong. Perhaps she likes old Meg Ryan movies, or indulges in _90210_ as a sort of guilty pleasure, or is an internet poker addict… the point is, he doesn't know. Because, when he's honest with himself, he doesn't really know her.)

He wants to see her comfortable, relaxed, _happy_. The lines on her face are always so deep when she looks at him, like she's made of steel and Schweitzer Allen bolts, and he wonders – only in moments of idleness of course – if there is anyone she looks at softly. (He hopes not.)

She was really brave to come back after the riot, he thinks. Braver than anyone else in Fox River.

Sara was a doctor, and a governor's daughter, and had choices.

She didn't have to be there.

(This thought makes him smile wryly – two months ago, he didn't have to be there either, he acknowledges.)

She shouldn't have to defend herself with syringes and shards of broken Plexiglas and crawl along ventilation systems to escape from the very people she wanted so badly to help.

_Be the change you want to see in the world._

Sometimes, like when he feels Linc might be almost safe, he allows himself to think that he could have had that kind of life with her, the kind of life where she would wear his t-shirts to bed and accidentally write shopping lists on his important blueprints and sketches. Because he finds he believes her when she says she is a disorganized packrat. (_You should see my apartment, she muttered wryly_.) Maybe he could have had that life with her before, you know, he'd gotten himself incarcerated. This thought is always followed with the seemingly insignificant detail that, had he not gotten himself incarcerated, he would not have met her. And, as his subconscious stubbornly refuses to let him forget, he barely knows her, despite the fact that her high school yearbook photo hung on his wall for months.

**--**

He acknowledges that he's treated her horrifically. He knows, he knows.

It's agonizing.

At least to himself (_at least be honest with yourself_), he can admit with a certain amount of alacrity that kissing Sara had certainly been different than kissing any number of women he'd met at the Green Door Tavern. It had certainly felt different, both inside and out, and, again, he could admit to all of this.

So what now, he asks himself. When he'd felt guilty about ruining Lincoln's life, he'd busted him out of prison.

What the hell was he going to do now that he had ruined Sara's?

Without that kiss, Michael was certain, the infirmary door would have stayed locked.

It didn't bear thinking about.


End file.
